Modern oceanography divides the deep sea into three zones: the bathyal, the abyssal and the hadal. What a cadence those terms form - each more profound than the last. The farther down we go, the less we know: the floor of the Marianas Trench has been less studied than the surface of Mars. "What passes in those remote depths...we can scarcely conjecture," wrote Jules Verne with relish in 1870 - conscious that where science had been unable to reach, fantasy could prosper.
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